Even if you can afford this luxury fitness assessment, should you have it if you’re a millennial or Gen Z? Adam Bloodworth discovers that knowing how you might die comes with drawbacks as well as benefits
“I want to be shocked.” It was a weird thing to say to four medical experts, but they nodded and smiled anyway. I was sitting on a deep couch so plush it felt like it could swallow me whole, the type of couch you see in the foyers of residential buildings that no-one ever sits on. I was being cross-examined on every aspect of my physical and mental health in a way very few people ever experience.
Outside the window, the red bricks of the Mayfair town house opposite shone the colour of roasted peppers in the winter sun. An hour later, I was covered in sweat and hooked up to a vaguely terrifying gas mask, which measured my breathing as I pelted along a treadmill. “You’re a wasted talent,” said a former Harlequins rugby player turned trainer, who had been sitting opposite me with an iPad to analyse the way I jump, assessing my balance and strength, and had me closing my eyes while trying to balance (I managed four seconds). Then there was the dreaded press-ups and some eerie silence lying alone, horizontal, wearing the mask.
Finding out I’m a decent runner wasn’t the feedback this 95kg, 34-year-old with man boobs was expecting, but deep, confronting health analysis throws up the good as well as the bad. Not long after, I answered a raft of questions about my lifestyle, before a psychologist sat opposite me. “You’re a very rare mix of vulnerable and assertive,” she said. “Together that combination is…” She made a symbol with her hands to illustrate a head exploding.
Everyone going through Mayfair’s Hooke private health centre must have a personal epiphany of some kind. Mine was mental health: finally, a grasp of why I over-think, why I struggle so much with confrontation. In a few minutes, my challenges had been spelled out: answering years-long questions about social anxiety I had never really articulated. Sure, I was better at running than I should be for someone with a proficiency for eating two Curly-Wurlys smudged into one big ball, but my main takeaway was about my mind.
Hooke is one of a handful of private health M.O.T centres claiming to help extend your life by providing in-depth holistic healthcare that tackles body, mind and spirit. It is for the one per cent; my basic introductory treatment is available for £7,500. For that, you get one-on-one consultants with a doctor, psychologist, nutritionist and fitness expert, a thousand blood tests (which feels comforting), access to some of the funkiest modern tech around, and a precis of your private health that – in word count and weight if not enjoyment – is a solid replacement for a Sunday broadsheet.
For months after my analysis my health anxiety got worse. Feeling like my heart was beating weirdly, worrying about bowel cancer
Why was I putting myself through this? First things first, I’m hardly the only millennial or Gen Z person trying to get healthier. There’s been a huge turn away from alcohol and rises in people taking therapy. Referrals for anxiety and depression through the NHS increased by 21.5 percent from 2020 to 2021. But for me personally, as someone who reviews soufflés for a living, I was starting to hear the death knell. I spent almost every day last winter ill with colds, flus, and fevers.
Mid-thirties were coming at me and something had to change. It’s clear why this sort of thing is attractive if you can afford it – but the real question is: if you’re millennial or Gen Z, should you? The idea of preventative healthcare like this is that it will turf up something, and for those like me lucky enough to have not given their health much thought, I discovered that the luxury armchairs in the Hooke waiting rooms can’t entirely soften the blow.
For months after my analysis my health anxiety got worse. I was first told by a doctor that I was dreaming up horrendous brain tumours at age ten (I was fine, but not alone: health anxiety has worsened for many of us since lockdown, for obvious reasons, including younger people who are millennial or Gen Z). This time it was the whole shebang; feeling like my heart was beating weirdly, worrying about bowel cancer, watching documentaries about autoimmune disease and fearing my twitches had got worse.
It made sense to me that pages and pages of intense medical analysis on my chances of developing pulmonary heart disease, cancer, diabetes and the rest caused my worries to peak. Seeing a score for every possible ailment on a piece of paper confronts you with the vulnerability of your flesh. It is helpful, sure, but terrifying? Absolutely. I was lucky to discover I had nothing horrendous going on. The news that I had a 40 percent chance of suffering a stroke by age 99 provoked my dad into a fit of hysterics. I felt next to nothing because, well, my dear reader, all sorts of things can happen before age 99, including, most likely, death.
Back at Hooke that morning, and it had been raining. The heavy-set door to the West London HQ swung open before I could press the buzzer. Hollie, who I’d been emailing, had seen me coming through the glass beside the door and was dressed impeccably to greet me. After the gym, a smoothie, then a very embarrassing conversation.
“Tell me about a good day,” said a nutritionist wearing a well- ironed shirt. Then the shame of his follow-up question: “And a bad day.” Like a silly school boy who’d stolen biscuits from the jar and been caught, I told the truth: that on a bad day I could see off a bag of Haribo to de-stress, that on most days I ate crisps at lunchtime and that I rarely cooked.
The nutritionist told me how he’s perfected his ability to never look shocked: he’s had Type-A CEOs going through these doors for years. “They want to win,” he said. “It’s always about language. At the moment we’re not winning. We need to win.” Later there were blood tests by a nurse who should win an Oscar for his performance at keeping me from freaking out as what felt like the gazillionth syringe approached my left arm.
In careful detail I was told how I could renovate my life, changing from a hedonistic choccy pud critic to the type of guy who treats himself with an almond or two in the afternoon
Great lengths have been taken to make sure nothing about Hooke looks or feels medical. Even the walls are warm shades, and in the doctor’s office, interesting skeletal models and beautiful diagrams of the human body fill the empty spaces.
Only the occasional ultraviolet sign is a giveaway; directions about how to discard needles are sure to haul you back into the medical realm. The reality is that many turn to Hooke when they’ve left it too late. In their seventies and up, they have a palpable sense of the need to keep the lights on. My takeaway was “you’re fine now, but I don’t want to see your weight carrying on this trajectory when you’re 40.” If it does, it’ll be the beginning of the time everything can start going properly wrong, including – as my paperwork spelled out – the terrible foreboding notion of cholesterol problems.
Now I have a meal plan and a workout plan. In careful detail I was told how I could renovate my life, changing from a hedonistic choccy pud critic to the type of guy who treats himself with an almond or two in the afternoon. It’s been a few months and I haven’t lost my man boobs yet. I still spend more time sweating in the steam room than on the gym floor. I go out six nights a week and, until recently, couldn’t fathom the idea of a night in. But Hooke definitely scratched the surface, laying the groundwork for me to start at least thinking about the ways I can change. In this chaotic world, that’s a lot.
Hooke’s Investigation+ costs £15,000. Adam experienced the £7,500 Investigation; hooke.london
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